Trial of the Xel'Naga: Red Bull LAN - Day 3 LIVE

Welcome to Trial of the Xel’Naga: Day 3. Tonight, Red Bull and Day[9]TV bring you StarCraft II eSports with a twist. YOU the spectator are granted super powers to join the game live and change the outcome!

Tonight’s theme is STORM. Which players will the maelstroms plague with violent storms and which players will be blessed by their psionic power? The grand finals will consist of ALL three themes. Tonight, you decide the fates.

Trial of the Xel’Naga will consist of an 8-person single elimination 2v2 bracket. Rather than playing alone, each pro player will be joined by an amateur player chosen from the audience. Thursday and Friday, 4 players will play each night and 2 will advance. On Saturday, the advancing players will compete in the semifinals and finals matches.

Planet Cracker – The planet cracker is the ultimate weapon of war. Unleash an incredibly powerful mother ship, which patrols the map and annihilates any unit or building that is unlucky enough to stray into its path.

Basic Blink – Ever wish your marines or zerglings could blink? Cause storms to cloud judgment and reality alike, briefly granting all tier one units the ability the blink for a short duration.

Safe Zone – Nothing says storm like a good old-fashioned duck-and-cover! Launch impending maelstroms which force all units to make a split second decision: run to the safe zone or be taken by the weather.

Random Vortex – Shakuras' storms are as unpredictable as they are violent. Summon multiple random-location vortexes to the battlefield, sucking up any units that are caught too close.

Storm Catastrophe – Everything else was just warm-up: this ability shows the true power of the elements! Unleash a storm unlike any other, summoning a continuous onslaught of giant psionic storms, vortexes, and forcefields all over the map.

Seeker Missile Tower - Test a player's awareness and micro. Cause the harmless tower in the middle of the map to erupt into action, spawning endless seeker missiles that target, stalk, and explode upon random units throughout the map.

Mega Sentries - Does your favorite player need mega help? Grant mega sentries to your favorite team players! They're a chaotic unit that bolsters any army and can summon forth oversized forcefields.

Silence – No units can attack anything for two minutes! Quick, move your banelings to his mineral field and set up your tank lines on their own highground!

Tonight, BlinG, iNcontroL, NoNy, and Illusion will challenge the fates!

To participate, visit www.RedBullUSA.com/LAN when the event goes live! We will be posting polls periodically throughout the event. Simply follow the caster’s directions to decide the fate of the players!

Whenever I encounter some little hitch, or some of my orbs get out of orbit, nothing pleases me so much as to make the crooked straight and crush down uneven places. www.day9.tv

On September 02 2012 09:02 Dexington wrote:This map looks much more fun than the last one. In my opinion, the last one was ruined by the infestors. Hopefully mega sentries aren't as imba.

Yes, I know it's for fun, but ridiculously over powered units aren't.

The bigger issue was that the other abilities (bane mines, critters) didn't force reactions so much as 'sit back and defend'. That meant the games had to get forced into something more chaotic, unlike the fire map where nukes did not give a fuck if you wanted to sit back, and treasure banes had to be hunted.

Really hope the maps tonight is better. Last night was pretty bland compare to the first day maps. I really want to see the maps that can push the pro gamers to the limit of their multitasking and map awareness.

On September 02 2012 09:36 LeapofFaith wrote:These abilities seem like they give less of an advantage than the abilities from yesterday, which is pretty good.

The responsibility is really the "game master"'s. With about 20 abilities some are bound to be crazy, especially if you click them 9times in a row like was done yesterday with some. They really should be used a few times every 4 minutes or so, not every minute, and ideally extreme abilities at most once or twice per game.

I like the concept of crazy maps with random events happening all over, but I really feel that if they do something like this in the future they should make it 1v1 and focus on the pros, the abilities should pretty much all be fairly random and be given to random or all people, and you should be able to ask for random help a fixed number (say 3) times. Maybe if you had a good game master this could work out, but this would mean someone who was not biased, had experience with the map and abilities, and understand how to direct a game, not absolutely control it.

Er. Isn't the whole point of this to dick around? Why are people talking about taking it seriously? I watched the vods from yesterday and it was absolutely hilarious from start to finish. Also, Husky is absolutely fucking brilliant at this sort of stuff.

On September 02 2012 11:27 Evangelist wrote:Er. Isn't the whole point of this to dick around? Why are people talking about taking it seriously? I watched the vods from yesterday and it was absolutely hilarious from start to finish. Also, Husky is absolutely fucking brilliant at this sort of stuff.

I can play a fun game of basketball with my friend, but if some dude runs outta nowhere when I'm 10 with 2 minutes left, tackles me and let's my friend score 12 points in that mainframe, then it's not so fun.

On September 02 2012 09:07 Fionn wrote:All I ask is that if a player wins early due to taking an advantage of a choice made by the audience or online fans, that you don't randomly give the other team 30 mega sentries.

I think a structure like a lifeline system would be smart. Give each team a limited number of help requests and the audience chooses what it is. Then you prevent stupid things like 10 giant infestors, and limiting requests keeps games from going on forever.

I know this is suppose to be "fun" but fun can have some structure too. It just feels like so much is out of the players hands they might as well be doing this with bots playing eachother.

On September 02 2012 09:24 DMXD wrote:Really hope the maps tonight is better. Last night was pretty bland compare to the first day maps. I really want to see the maps that can push the pro gamers to the limit of their multitasking and map awareness.

It might be more fun (and interesting) if each player gets to pick a power that they can request once in each game. Things like silence, gold minerals, treasure goblins etc. Casters can then speculate and build tension to when he would use that ability.

Of course, there would still be poll voting, but this might just prevent the casters themselves from going all crazy because the game is stalling.